


she's a lady, i am just a line without a hook

by semipeaceful



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, F/M, Follows Canon, Hanahaki Disease, Internalized Homophobia, Jealous Allison, Sexual References, That's Right Bitch, Unhealthy Relationships, a tiny tiny reference to allison almost getting assaulted, bad mothers!, brief mentions of eating disorders, but seth still dies, endgame happy renison i promise, i took quite a few liberties with hanahaki in this one ngl, it's not deadly, kinda ignores a lot of the main plot, like neil isn't even mentioned, with the addition of the fact that allison has hanahaki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:48:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28457811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semipeaceful/pseuds/semipeaceful
Summary: “Hanahaki,” Renee had said. It was a statement, not a question, so Allison didn’t respond, just let her head hang over the toilet bowl. Eventually, Renee knelt down, tucking herself onto the tiny bathroom floor so they sat together, her hands rubbing comforting circles on Allison’s back. “For Seth?”At the sound of his name, Allison coughed up another petal.“Take a fucking guess, Renee.”Allison pukes roses when Seth's not around, so when Seth dies, Allison figures her hanahaki dies with him. It doesn't.
Relationships: Allison Reynolds/Renee Walker (All For The Game), Seth Gordon/Allison Reynolds
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	she's a lady, i am just a line without a hook

Allison Reynolds had a complicated relationship with flowers.

The night that Seth had saved her, just a few mere hours after that party, knelt over the toilet bowl, Renee holding back her blonde hair, she hadn’t hurled alcohol. She hurled flowers.

Rose petals, specifically. Rose petals so red that she couldn’t tell what was roses and what was  _ blood. _

Red roses had lined the driveway to the Reynolds’ main estate, had populated vases in every corner, had been given to her mother on every anniversary by her father’s assistant who had dates programmed into their little blackberries so her father never needed to bother.

When Allison had been younger, she’d tried to run away. Armed with her Exy racquet and seven hundred dollars in cash, she’d sprinted through the lawn in the middle of the night, praying the estate’s security wouldn’t see her, and tried to climb through the towering walls of red roses.

Thorns scraped her arms, her legs, her neck. She was even certain she had swallowed one. Consumed by that sickly sweet smell, drowning in red and greens and sharp, prickly thorns quietly tearing her skin to shreds.

A guard pulled her from the bushes, kicking and screaming.

At that point, Allison wasn’t even sure what she had been fighting-the roses, or that man.

That next morning, scabs scattered across her torn skin, her mother chastised her.

_ You're lucky you’re so young, _ she had said, surveying the damage on her pale skin.  _ These won’t scar. Proper ladies don’t have scars. _

Allison dreamed of that night, throat scratchy and hoarse from copious amounts of alcohol and reminiscent of those thorns. When she woke up, Renee had placed a glass of water, two painkillers, and a cough drop on her nightstand next to her bed.

A few hours later, Seth brought her flowers. Roses. Red.

She threw them in the trash, but her chest didn’t seem to ache as much when he was holding her, so she counted it as a victory.

They broke up for the first time a month later. Allison heard from Dan who heard from Matt that Seth was using again, and an hour later, Renee was holding her hair back as she hurled rose petals into their cheap dorm toilet.

“Hanahaki,” Renee had said. It was a statement, not a question, so Allison didn’t respond, just let her head hang over the toilet bowl. Eventually, Renee knelt down, tucking herself in the tiny bathroom so they sat together, her hands rubbing comforting circles on Allison’s back. “For Seth?”

At the sound of his name, Allison coughed up another petal.

“Take a fucking guess, Renee.”

Thus began her tumultuous relationship with Seth Gordon. They fucked, they fought, they broke up. He used, she puked. They fucked, they fought, they broke up. Pills for him. Red, red roses for her.

Renee always held her hair back, even this time, in the locker room of a rival team’s stadium, skin still damp from her post-game shower. Dan had hovered near the door, anxiously, until Renee sent her out to stall Coach.

If anything, Allison would be thankful for the two of them. They never complained, never judged, but were there for her. A constant through her overwise tumultuous relationships.

Once the last of the petals from the night had dislodged from her throat, Allison sat back, tipping her head back against the cool metal of the stall, letting the feeling of Renee’s hand holding hers wash over her. Normally they weren’t this bad, but one too many Vixen had flirted with Seth before the game, so her voice was hoarse with effort when she said, “I wish I didn’t love him.”

Renee had smiled, softly, and squeezed Allison’s hand. “We don’t get to choose who we love.”

_ I would choose you _ , Allison wanted to scream.  _ By God, Renee, over any other man, I would choose you. _

Per usual, she and Seth made up the next day. Made up and made out.

It was nice.

Comfortable.

Sex, she understood.  _ Seth _ , she understood.

Unsurprisingly, they broke up three weeks later.

Renee wasn’t there.

Allison was hyperventilating into the toilet and Renee. Wasn’t.  _ There. _

Dan was there. Dan was there, holding back her hair, pretending like the sight of the blood red roses didn’t make her want to hurl too.

It wasn’t the same.

“Why do you do this?” Dan asked, and she sounded almost just as tired as Allison felt. “I can tell it’s hurting you, so why?”

_ Because it’s easy _ , Allison wanted to say.  _ Because how do I know it’s love if it doesn’t hurt? _

“He’s fucking incredible in bed, Dan,” she said, because she knew it would make Dan laugh, which she did.

A second later, Renee appeared in the doorway, flushed and breathing heavily like she had run all the way to Fox Tower from Dobson’s office, and shed her jacket and scarf to take her place on the floor with them.

“Tonight seems like an ice cream and movie night,” Renee said, and since it was Renee, there was no arguing about it.

Halfway through Legally Blonde, someone left red roses outside their door addressed to Allison.

Matt caught her once.

On one of their off-weeks, Allison knelt over the bathroom toilet, too weak to move after a particularly bad fit. She’d texted Renee a few minutes ago, who said she was on her way back from class, so it was just a waiting game, and when there was a hesitant knock on the bathroom door, Allison had said, “Come in,” without a second thought.

Matt stared at her. Stared at the toilet, thankfully flushed and empty. Stared at her pale face.

“Morning sickness,” she said, just to watch him squirm, which he did, eyes widening and jaw dropping without the slightest passing thought that she might have been fucking with him. She laughed at his expression, and he closed his mouth. “God, Matt, you’re so gullible.”

“She has the flu,” Renee’s soft voice lied, and she slipped into the bathroom, pressing a cold bottle of water and a cough drop into Allison’s weak fingers. “Go tell Coach she won’t be at practice, won’t you?”

Once Matt was gone, Allison downed half the bottle and popped in the cough drop, wincing at the taste. Renee’s eyes followed the actions, lingering on Allison’s lips as she sucked on the medicine.

“You didn’t have to tease him like that,” Renee said, finally, tearing her eyes away from Allison in favor of pulling out the cleaning supplies under the sink.

Allison smiled, reaching over to poke at Renee’s foot with her own. “You have to admit his expression was pretty hilarious, though.”

“… Maybe a little.”

Allison found Seth at a coffee shop on campus the next day, and, a few minutes later, they had make-up sex in the coffee shop's bathroom.

Once upon a time, Allison had been bulimic. Well, maybe the use of the past tense  _ had been _ wasn’t exactly correct. She wasn’t rail-thin anymore, but it was still a struggle sometimes. Sometimes, just like she forced Seth to take his anti-depressants, he forced her to eat a solid meal.  _ Keep down  _ a solid meal.

She’d always hated how much  _ this  _ felt like  _ that. _ Hated how that feeling of bile, of that need to purge something from her body, reminded her of those days where food was the enemy. Where the sight of her muscles in the mirror made her gag and cry.

_ Proper ladies,  _ her mother always said,  _ don’t play enough sports to get muscles. _

_ Proper ladies can kiss my ass, _ Allison thought, and coughed a full rose worth of petals stained a blood red as Renee patiently rubbed her back.

She hadn’t expected that their next round of make-up sex would be their last.

Allison found out about Seth’s death only a few moments after the deed was done. His body still felt warm in her arms as she cried, the sound of her screams mixing with the screams of the ambulance outside, their friend from the soccer team that originally found him trying to pull her away.

She couldn’t stop staring at her hands. Staring at her hands as she got confirmation that he’s dead, even though his arms still felt  _ warm _ and staring at her hands as she held the urn containing his ashes, the urn uncomfortably  _ warm _ , staring at her hands as she remembered patting down the pockets in his jeans, checking and double checking and triple checking the pills were gone and only feeling his warm body underneath her fingers. Warm.

When Renee drove her back to Abby’s house from the crematorium in Allison’s convertible, she wordlessly turned the air conditioning on full blast.

_ Mourning  _ was new territory for her. The most she’d mourned before was distant grandparents she wasn’t close to when they inevitably passed, or the death of any chance of salvaging her relationship with her parents when she accepted Wymack’s scholarship. She was lucky in that way, compared to her teammates and friends.

They had a lot more to grieve.

Renee taught her to cry, taught her to grieve, taught her that Allison liked to be held softly, softer than Seth ever did.

Renee held her and whispered the fates of some of her friends from years ago, the demise of boys and girls younger than them, of heartbreak and horror and the million different chances Renee got to learn how to grieve before she finally got it right. She murmured tales from the streets, explained her scars, physical and emotional, laid herself bare for Allison to see.

It helped.

“At least,” Allison said, one night, as they laid in their separate beds in the room they shared at Abby’s. “I won’t have to puke up any more flowers.”

Renee had been silent for a while, before she said, quietly, “There is that.”

A week later, Allison felt a familiar tickle in her throat.

_ No, no, no. _

She excused herself from their drill and high-tailed it to the bathroom, breathing frantic as she felt that first flick of a petal against the back of her throat.

She didn’t make it to the toilet, but only made it as far as the lounge before she coughed into her hands, something deep down in her lungs aching to get out.

Something landed in her palm. Shaking with effort, she pulled her hand away from her mouth.

A thorn, green and spiky and bloody.

She coughed again, and this time, a single petal floated from her mouth, landing ever so elegantly next to the thorn.

The petal was bloody red.

The sight reminded her of Seth.

Her chest hurt, but she wasn’t sure if it was from the rose bush in her lungs or if it was  _ Seth. _

_ He’s dead, s _ he wanted to scream, but settled for throwing the thorn and the petal into the trash, kicking a wall, and screeching something incomprehensible.

Her chest fucking  _ hurt. _

She didn’t tell Renee this time.

It felt like a failure. Especially considering how hard Renee worked to help Allison move on, to properly grieve. It felt like a failure that her lungs still ached for the air that Seth Gordon breathed.

So she locked herself in the bathroom and coughed quietly, praying to Renee’s God that they didn’t hear her in the boys’ room next door.

The petals floated, softly, quietly, to the toilet, and it was such a routine that Allison almost flushed the toilet without even looking at them.

Almost.

Because in the corner of her eye, one hand poised to flush, she caught sight of one of the petals. It lay in the toilet, surrounded by its morbid brothers and sisters, and as it sat, the blood slowly leeched off it, making the color of the water a faint pink.

The petal, underneath all that blood, wasn’t more red.

It was white.

Allison heard their dorm room open, heard Renee call her name, and she cursed, flushing before she could think too much about the significance of the color change.

Renee was still there. Matt and Dan were there for her too, of course, and Coach and Abby, and she could even tell that Nicky was trying. Trying his hardest to understand, to provide what comfort she let him give her.

But they weren’t Renee.

Renee, who always seemed to have a cough drop in her purse whenever Allison needed one. Renee, who spent cumulative days of her life holding back Allison’s hair. Renee, whose backrubs could put her to sleep faster than any sleepy time tea she’d tried. Renee, who agreed to  _ change positions _ on the court to help pick up  _ Allison’s  _ slack.

She still didn’t tell Renee about the reappearing flowers.

It was just latent feelings for her late boyfriend, that’s  _ all it was _ , Allison told herself, as she sat on the toilet of a restaurant bathroom.

Although, she hadn’t heard of anyone having hanahaki disease for someone that was  _ dead _ . Admittedly, she hadn’t done much research to begin with, just read that it wasn’t fatal for the first few consecutive years, and went to a doctor early on to confirm she wasn’t about to seize on the court, and she’d been holding steady since, so it didn’t seem that necessary to worry herself with it.

So she sat on the toilet, a timer set for five minutes so Renee wouldn’t worry about her and her long bathroom breaks, and opened a browser on her phone.

She found… nothing.  _ Impossible _ , some sources even said. Never been heard of before.

Of course she could count on Seth to keep fucking her over from the grave, too.

Her throat itched, and she knew a petal was coming, but there was also no way in hell she was getting close to that gross ass stinky toilet and sticky floor, so she coughed it out into her hands and lifted the top of the little trash can in the stall meant for tampons and pads.

Before she tossed the petals in, she caught sight of something else, soft and velvety and white and covered in a thin layer of blood.

Flower petals. Long and thin, oblong, like lilies or something in that vein.

Allison felt for the other poor soul in this diner with hanahaki, and washed her hands of blood before returning to her friends.

Allison didn’t go out as much anymore, not as much as she used to with Seth, so it was a relief to spend Halloween in her natural environment of loud music, alcohol, and sweaty bodies on a dance floor. So she chugged her drinks, downed the cracker dust, and danced.

Even as she danced with some guy in a cowboy outfit, her tiny dress that barely counted as a costume if not for the cat ears on her head, she was looking for Renee. Looking for that tiny flash of red that would clue her to her friend’s appearance on the dance floor.

Just as the, albeit handsome, man suggested they go somewhere private, she caught sight of Little Red Riding Hood, making her way down the stairs to join the dance floor.

“No thanks,” Allison said, and slipped through the crowd to meet Renee halfway.

They danced, and Allison almost forgot the itch in the back of her throat, and she thought, maybe that everything would be alright, as Renee giggled and turned her head and the flashing light reflected off her face, off her pale hair.

_ Maybe everything would be alright _ , Allison thought, even as she flushed white rose petals down the toilet of a nightclub.

The petals kept coming and she kept coughing them up.

It was a little surprising, honestly, that Renee hadn’t noticed, but Allison wasn’t oblivious. Renee had been excusing herself quite often, staring at her phone, talking to  _ Jean  _ apparently.  _ Jean _ , from the banquet.  _ Jean _ , that was one of Riko’s weirdo lackeys.

Whatever. At least it was easier for Allison to hide the petals if Renee was distracted with this other boy. Even though the thought of Renee and him together made her puke more flowers.

She missed Seth.

That had to be it. That had to be why she got so sour watching Renee take a phone call, cheeks painted a soft pink, as she sat in one of the stadium seats.

Of course she missed Seth.

Renee laughed. Allison couldn’t hear it from where she was in the court, but she saw the action, saw that little secret smile Renee always got when someone said something funny, like, even if the joke was told to a group, she always knew it was really for her and the speaker alone.

And Allison’s chest hurt.

Renee invited Allison to spend Thanksgiving with her adoptive mother in North Dakota.

Allison said yes.

Sometimes, being so caught up in the Foxes and their inner turmoil and trauma, Allison forgot that some people were  _ normal _ . Stephanie Walker was  _ normal _ .

Normal as in she obeyed the laws of the road when she drove, normal as in she talked freely about her job, about Renee’s childhood (or later teenage years, at least), about how proud she was of the Foxes.

Normal as in she asked if Allison was alright when she asked for a cough drop to soothe her scratchy throat, and Allison lied and said she was fine.

Renee had been strangely quiet on the plane ride, but Allison just chalked it up to an exhausting week, figuring she would be back to normal after a nap and a few hours at home with her mom.

On Thursday morning, Allison woke up alone. They’d both slept in Renee’s old room, Allison on Renee’s bed and Renee on an air mattress on the floor, but when she yawned and rubbed her eyes open the next morning, the air mattress was empty.

Renee had always been an early riser, so Allison wasn’t too worried. She picked up her makeup bag and set off for the bathroom.

She remembered Renee mentioning off-handedly yesterday that the upstairs bathroom didn’t have a lock, so she paused to see if she could hear movement inside before she opened the door.

For a second, she thought she heard a cough (maybe Renee caught a cold on the plane?) but a second later, the toilet flushed and the sink turned on, and Renee opened the door, startling when she saw Allison hovering outside the door.

“Bathroom’s all yours,” Renee said, and retreated into her bedroom before Allison could ask if she was alright.

Allison considered going after her, but felt a familiar tickled in back of her throat and lunged for the toilet instead.

“Can you go find Renee?” Stephanie asked, a few hours later, as she stuck a couple spoons into the assortment of casseroles and potatoes and  _ normal  _ Thanksgiving dishes. “I think she’s upstairs somewhere.”

Allison nodded, and quickly headed up the stairs to do as Stephanie asked. Renee wasn’t in any of the open rooms, like Stephanie’s bedroom, or the loft with the board games stacked floor to ceiling. She wasn’t in the bedroom, either, so Allison was in the process of debating checking outside, too, when she passed by the upstairs bathroom door.

She thought she heard shuffling from inside, which solved the mystery of where Renee was, so she knocked on the door.

“Dinner’s done,” she called, and waited for a response.

No response came.

She knocked again. “Renee?”

“Yeah,” Renee said, but it sounded frantic, and strangled. “Yeah, I heard, I’ll be down in a minute.”

Normally, Allison would’ve taken Renee at her word, but something in Renee’s voice made her more worried than usual.

“Are you okay?” Allison asked.

“Yeah,” Renee said, again, in that same tone of voice that sounded like she was  _ not okay. _ “I’m-”

Whatever Renee was about to say she was, got interrupted by a wheeze and a horrible sounding cough. A horribly, horribly,  _ familiar  _ cough. A cough that was so familiar because Allison had coughed that same cough just a few hours ago in that same bathroom.

Allison opened the bathroom door.

Renee’s head snapped up from where she sat on the ground, and she looked up at Allison helplessly as she held a single, perfectly formed white lily in her hands, a little fleck of blood in the corner of her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Renee said, and then she crumpled, heaving into the toilet bowl, so Allison rushed forward and knelt beside her, pulling back Renee’s hair with one hand and holding her with the other one as Renee slowly coughed and heaved and hurled lilies into the toilet.

Renee’s flowers had less blood than hers, probably due to the lack of thorns on the plant, but these ones weren’t just petals. They were fully formed flowers, like they had been growing, developing, deep in her lungs for a long time before they decided it was time to make their appearance.

So Renee coughed them up, and Allison’s heart lurched everytime. Sympathy pains sparked in her own lungs and throat, but a few minutes later, Renee sat up and silently flushed the toilet. Almost methodically, without even acknowledging Allison, Renee stood and washed her hands and got out her toothbrush and toothpaste. For a second, Allison thought she heard her mother’s voice, something about being a _proper lady_ that got rid of all evidence of suffering to not burden those around her. _A_ _proper lady brushed her teeth after regurgitating a bouquet’s worth of flowers,_ before Allison shook the thought out of her head.

Renee was still silent. She was embarrassed, Allison realized, finally, as she watched Renee brush her teeth. She wouldn’t meet Allison’s eyes in the mirror, and her face was flushed. Even more flushed than when Allison caught her texted Jean.

_ Jean. _

Of course.

“So,” Allison said, finally, as Renee spat into the sink and rinsed. “Hanahaki?”

Renee still didn’t meet her eyes. “Yes.”

“How long?”

Renee thought for a moment. “Maybe a month now. But I have a feeling they had been growing for longer. Just… dormant.”

Allison nodded, and as Renee closed the drawer, toothpaste and toothbrush safely inside, she asked the question she  _ really  _ wanted to know. “Are they for Jean?”

That question startled Renee, and she froze for a second, and Allison was sure that was a response that meant  _ yes _ but then Renee laughed. She laughed, absurdly, but Allison just frowned.

“What?”

“No,” Renee managed to say through her nearly tear-inducing fun-house imitation of laughter. “Not Jean.”

Allison grit her teeth. They had to be for Jean, there was no one else they could be for! Maybe Andrew, but Renee had assured Allison that nothing was going to happen there for either of them. Outside of the Foxes, Allison didn’t know of any other people that Renee was particularly close to. “Who are they for, then?”

“They’re not for Jean,” Renee said, and her voice sounded a little hysterical as she said it, still half-laughing with no humor behind it. “They’re for  _ you. _ ”

They’re for  _ you. _

You.

Distantly, Allison heard her mother’s voice.  _ Proper ladies have husbands. Proper ladies don’t kiss other ladies. _

“They’re for you, Allison,” Renee repeated, weakly.

When she thought about it, Allison supposed that was a reasonable enough explanation, but her brain had more or less just short-circuited. It felt like attempting to turn a car on, over and over turning the key, trying desperately to get it to function despite the dead battery in the engine.

They’re for  _ you _ .

The roses. The roses that weren’t red, the roses that couldn’t be for a dead man.

Those pure white roses.

Renee looked down, not meeting Allison’s eyes. She started to say, “I’m sorry,” but Allison surged forward, gripped Renee’s jaw in her hands, and tilted her head up to kiss her.

Renee gasped against her, a quiet and muffled sound that made Allison hesitate for a second, before Renee pushed back just as hard, reaching up to wrap her arms around Allison, trapping her against the other girl’s lips.

Kissing Renee, kissing  _ her best friend _ , was nothing like kissing Seth, but she loved it all the same. Renee’s lips were soft, pliant, beneath hers, following Allison’s lead, savoring every little movement and action, while Seth’s had always been rough. Seth kissed like it was a pit stop on the way to the real destination, but Renee kissed like they were already there in the sand and sun of a lovely beach vacation, the sharp taste of peppermint from her toothpaste lingering between their lips, even as they parted, breathing heavily.

“Well,” Allison said.

“Well,” Renee agreed.

“Dinner is getting cold!” Stephanie called from downstairs. “If you want warm turkey, you’d better hurry it up!”

“I don’t mind cold turkey,” Allison murmured against Renee’s lips, but Renee just smiled up at her and pulled her downstairs to the dining room table.

That night, sharing Renee’s tiny teenage bed, they laid not unlike they used to, back as friends, Allison’s head tucked into the crook of Renee’s arm, Renee’s free hand absentmindedly kneading Allison’s tense muscles.

“I wonder if there were any bets on this,” Allison murmured, which made Renee snort.

“Maybe. I might have told Andrew about my feelings a while ago.”

Allison hummed, but that hum turned more into a moan as Renee worked on a knot in her back. The idea of Renee pining after her, for months, maybe even years, pleased Allison to no end, but also infuriated her. How much had she missed? How much had she hurt Renee? How many times had Renee held her hair back and given her cough drops for the roses that she coughed up for  _ Seth _ ?

“My throat still hurts,” Renee admitted. She didn’t say it like Allison should feel guilty about it, but she did anyways, a little shot of pain in her chest where her own roses used to sit. “I don’t know how you dealt with it for all those years.”

Allison almost bit back,  _ I don’t know how I dealt, either,  _ but when she thought about it, deep down, she knew how.

“It was you,” Allison murmured, and turned her head to place a sleepy kiss on Renee’s bare collarbone. “It’s always been you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yay!! I've been wanting to write something Renison for a while so I'm excited that I got the motivation to write this last night/this morning! I promise I'll eventually write something that's not based off of a piece of media about a sport (writing a slowburn pynch that I'll post once it's fully written) but for now, you're stuck with these queer jocks. It's still New Years Eve for me so happy New Years Eve, hopefully 2021 will be a little kinder of a year for all of us!
> 
> Fic title taken from the song Line Without a Hook by Ricky Montgomery
> 
> Check out my [tumblr](not-to-be-gay-but-holy-shit.tumblr.com)


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